Pace The Meaning, Carve Out The Law

August 02, 2010|By ROB KYFF, Special to The Courant

I learn something new about words every day.

Recently, for instance, I read this passage in a letter to the editor (its author was responding to Harold's Bloom's characterization of Great Britain as anti-Semitic): "… pace Bloom's good cheer at having been born a New Yorker — [England] actively provided a refuge for Jews, especially children, fleeing the Nazis when President Roosevelt was turning their boats away."

The word that threw me off was "pace," a usage of the word I'd never before encountered, or at least never noticed. I figured this wasn't the "pace" that means "rate of movement" or "step," and I didn't think it was the Latin "pace," meaning "peace." Off to the dictionaries!

I discovered that "pace," pronounced either "PAH-chay" or "PAY-see," is a Latinism that means "with all due respect to" or "contrary to the opinion of." "Pace" is the ablative of the Latin "pax" (peace); the English term is a shortening of the Latin phrase "pace tua" or "pace vestra," meaning "with all due respect (peace) to you."

"Pace" is almost always used before the name of a person or group of people, as in "Pace F. Scott Fitzgerald, American lives do have second acts," or "Pace the critics, the film has drawn huge audiences."

Washington Carvers

Two things you don't want to see being made are laws and sausages. Appropriately enough, journalists are deploying the butcher-related term "carve-out" to describe a tactic of the legislative process.

A "carve-out" is a surgical removal of restrictions in a law to exempt an industry or interest group from regulation. Time magazine writer Steven Brill used the term four times in three paragraphs as he described lobbyists' efforts to tweak key language in the financial reform bill.

Sometimes those carve-outs intersect and connect, leaving the legislation an empty shell. The trendy term for this termite-like destruction is "hollow out."

Discussing the weakening of the U.N. resolution imposing sanctions on Iran, columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote, "The Russians and Chinese bargained furiously and successfully to hollow out the sanctions resolution."

Pace lobbyists, Russians and Chinese, the key concept behind both "carve-out" and "hollow out" is deception. From the outside, the weakened bill or resolution appears to be strong.

Rob Kyff is a teacher and writer in West Hartford. Write to him in care of The Courant, Features Department, 285 Broad St., Hartford, CT 06115, or by e-mail at WordGuy@aol.com.